Unforgettable Childhood

Last week we took advantage of one of our last days on the front porch. We decided to have a little picnic. Nothing fancy, just Mac and Cheese on a blanket in paper bowls.

After we finished eating I gave each of the younger girls (the oldest was away at Bible Camp), a folder, paper and some new markers to create a prayer journal.

As a family we have a lot of answered prayers to praise God for and requests that we continue to pray for. A couple of years ago I started a prayer journal myself using the book Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth.

She now has a new book specifically for kids, but I do not have a copy of this book yet.

This is a great exercise in prayer to do with your kids. We had so much fun creating the pictures and talking about prayer.

Here are a few pictures from the day.

How do you focus on prayer with your kids?

I have been looking for something that I could do with my middle daughter that would be something that just her and I could do together. One of the things that she loves to do is read and be read to. One of my friends with four girls told me that they are on their third round of reading the Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder to their daughters.

Living in South Dakota, one of the locations of the books, I thought that this series would be perfect for us. I picked up a box set of the first five books.

She was excited when I showed them to her. She said they are actually reading the first book in school. She didn’t care and couldn’t wait to start the first book at home, too.

We try to read one chapter a night. Sometimes her dad puts her to bed and they read a different book. The Little House books are a special time for her and me.

This summer we will try to get to DeSmet, South Dakota and visit the Ingalls Homestead. I am excited about this journey we can take together through the books and in real life.

I may have to find the TV show and DVR it so we can watch a few episodes together. I remember watching them when I was a little girl.

Are there any books that are really special to you and your kids?

Resourceful Mommy is kicking off a new campaign titled 30 Days of Change. Her first challenge is all about Parenting. I decided that this is a perfect campaign topic for this blog.

Each day she will post a challenge for the next day. In her words, “The purpose is to create a happier, less stressful relationship with our children, so to participate simply choose a person in your life with whom you would like an easier repoire.”

Her first challenge is this:

Throughout the entire day tomorrow, say the word “no” to your children as infrequently as possible.

My little one is home with me all day tomorrow so this will be an interesting challenge for me. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Starting on Sunday night we lit our first Advent Candle as a family. This is a tradition that both my husband and I grew up with at our home churches. We decided a few years ago to bring this tradition into our home. Every holiday season I love to dig out the wreath and the candles.

We start with our little one. She lights the first candle.

The first candle represents Hope. We talked with the girls about the Hope we have in Jesus. The girls are already talking about lighting the next candle on Sunday night.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Ephesians 6:1

We moved on to the letter “C” on our ABC Journey through Scripture. When I was studying the scripture for this letter I knew that this was perfect scripture for the upcoming week.

We took the girls back to the beginning to the 10 Commandments.

Honor your father and your mother. Exodus 20:12

We asked the girls if they knew what it means “To Honor” your parents. They thought that it probably meant the same thing as to obey them. I explained that my Bible commentary says, “it means speaking well of them and politely to them. It also means acting in a way that shows them courtesy and respect. It means following their teaching and example of putting God first.

What are some ways that you see mommy and daddy putting God first in our lives?

The girls came up with some good examples for the above question. However, I think that we have some work to do to really show them that God comes first above all other things.

How do you think we can all do a better job of putting God first?

We all agreed that spending more time in our Bible and doing devotions as a family is important for our family.

So our verse says to obey your parents. Do you think that honoring and obeying is the same?

I explained that to honor means to love and respect. To obey means to do what you are told. Both are very important in our relationships with each other.

Is it hard to be obedient to mom and dad sometimes?

Do you know that when you are disobedient to us you are being disobedient to God?

We did talk about how the only time it is okay to be disobedient to someone in authority is when they are acting in disobedience to God. Hopefully with this time together they started to realize that their obedience is really between them and God. It also helped us to realize that we need to put God first in our home so that we are an example to our kids.

Sunday night we moved to the letter “B” in our ABC Journey through Scripture. Immediately my thoughts went to Matthew and the Beatitudes, but for a 3, 7, & 9 year old, that is a little bit too much. Especially because my oldest is in the process of memorizing both the 10 Commandments and the 23rd Psalm.

So my husband and I decided on Matthew 5:8.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

We asked each of the girls to tell us some of the blessings in their lives. To be honest with you, this was not the discussion did not go as planned. The girls really struggled with coming up with blessings. It was frustrating. It made us realize this was a conversation that we really needed to have as a family.

I told the girls what my Bible commentary said about the word Blessed. It said, “To Jesus, Blessed means the experience of hope and joy. . . To find hope and joy, the deepest form of happiness, follow Jesus no matter what the cost.”

We moved on to being “pure in heart”. We asked the girls this question:

What does it mean to have a pure heart?

They  really didn’t have any answers so we turned to 1 John 1:7.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

We talked about the statement, “the blood of Jesus”. We asked the girls if they knew what that meant. Madelyn said “Jesus died on the cross to cover our sins”. Her older sister said, “Not cover our sins, He died to take away our sins”. We explained to the girls that it means both things.

We asked the girls this question:

Why do you think if we are pure in heart we will see God?

They were not sure so we asked them this question:

Do you think that if we are sinning do you think we will see God?

They agreed that we won’t see God if we continue to sin. We were trying to get them recognize that they do see God at work in their lives already. We asked them:

Can you think of examples of God working in our lives?

This made the verse start to make sense to them. They thought of examples of God healing people that they have prayed for. That seems to be the easiest way for them to see God’s work in their lives and the lives of others.

We ended our devotional time with a prayer. Each of us prayed about something we are thankful for. After this time together we realize that we all need to take more time to see God working in all the details of our daily lives. It also made us realize we have so many things to be thankful for.

Tonight we started a new devotion time in our house. We have different kids devotional books that we have done in the past with the girls, but we decided to try create our own family devotion time.

Our youngest is learning the alphabet so we decided to create our own “ABC’s of Scripture”. We started with the verse from 1 Peter 4:8.

“Above all, Love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.”

We started our discussion with some questions for the girls.

Do you have a list of rules in your classroom? What are some of the rules?

They listed a few of the rules they are supposed to follow. A few examples were to Raise your hand, Be nice to others, and Listen to the teacher.

Next we asked the girls this question.

Do you think that there is one rule that is the most important?

They didn’t really think that one was more important than the rest so we continued our discussion with these questions.

In the scripture Daddy read it starts with what “A” words? (Above All) What does Above All mean?

We talked about how “Above All” is like the most important rule in a list. We talked about the rest of the verse. As a family it is easy to think about loving each other deeply, but what about people that are not as easy to love. We had a great discussion about how we can show others the love that this scripture is talking about.

My husband turned to Matthew 22:37-39 and read to the girls.

“Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We talked about how God loves everyone and He wants us to love everyone, too. It is always interesting to listen to the responses our girls have during devotion times. Our middle daughter made a statement about a classmate she has that helped us to know she is starting to really understand the love that God has for all people. She said, “God loved Jack even though he doesn’t celebrate Christmas.” This led us into an interesting conversation about how even though not everyone believes in Jesus, we can show Jesus love to them in many different ways.

As a family we talked about how we don’t always do the best job of showing each other how much we love each other. And if we can’t show each other love, how much harder will it be to show others love. We talked about how as a family we are going to focus on loving all people, especially each other.

It was amazing how two verses helped us to have a wonderful conversation as a family. It was also amazing to see how much our girls at 9, 7 and 3 really understand.

When we finished up my husband prayed for us. As a family we are going to work on memorizing this scripture together before we move on to the letter “B”.